Base price: $30.
2 players.
Play time: ~30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 2
Full disclosure: A review copy of Iliad was provided by Bitewing Games.
Yes indeed, I finally found a theme for the month of March, and I’m calling it Greek Monthology. I have four Greek Mythology games to review so I’m doing one a week for the month. It’ll be fun, or weird, or both. Love a themed review set; really adds the whimsy to the work, I think. Bitewing did a couple Greek myth retakes on some Knizia titles, so we’re gonna see those, but there are more where that came from, I promise. The other game I review each week has no attachment to the theme, so it might be eels. This time it’s eels. Next time it might not be. I don’t know how many eel-themed games there are, and I want to leave some of my options open for GAMA Expo this week. Anyways; let’s get to it.
In Iliad, the Trojan War has begun! This war has brought the Trojans and the Greeks to blows, with Helen of Troy at the center of it all. Some people sacrificed their kids for a fair wind, some other people though a giant horse was a cool gift (never look a gift horse in the mouth), and so on. Things got weird; there’s a whole book. Now, you must vie against your opponent to claim the favor of the Gods, the hand of Helen of Troy in marriage, or strength beyond measure. Preferably all three. Play as Hector or Explicitly Famous Heterosexual Achilles as you fight for control of different parts of the battlefield. Didn’t even know you could make an Achilles game without Patroclus. Wild. Will you manage to win the war for your side?
Contents
Setup
Set out the board:
Next, put the various tokens in the bag and mix them up. Set five face-up near the board, making sure none of them are negative. If any are, put those back in the bag and draw again until you get ones that aren’t.
Place the rest around the board so that there’s one on the board edge adjacent to every space. Then, give each player a set of tiles to shuffle:
Place two face-up on the corresponding-color spaces in the center. If both are the same value, shuffle your two tiles back into your deck and try again. You’re good to start!
Gameplay
As mentioned, the goal of Iliad is to win the war! You can do this in a few ways, depending on how things shake out.
On your turn, you’ll play a tile on a square of your color so that it’s touching at least one other tile. Note that two of your tiles will never be adjacent; they’ll always be adjacent to your opponent’s tiles. It’s a fun little checkerboard pattern. Each tile (except for 5 and the Dolos [arrow] tiles) has an effect, ranging from moving your tiles to your opponent’s tiles to flipping tiles over and the like. Do that, and then check to see if scoring occurs.
If a line or a column are ever completely filled (even if they become unfilled later) and there are tokens still on that row or column, scoring occurs. The player with the highest total value of tiles in that row or column (or the player whose turn it is, in the event of a tie) wins and gets to choose which player gets which token (from the two on either side of that row or column). The Dolos [arrow] tiles are equal to the sum of the two tiles adjacent to them in that row or column, but they do not add any value from face-down tiles or other Dolos tiles.
Once that’s resolved, draw a new tile and the next player takes their turn. Play continues until all tokens are taken and the board is completely filled out. Then, final scoring happens.
First, check to see if either player has the Favor of the Gods. This means that they have at least one of each token of each of the five gods, or they have four and both wedding ring tokens (the gods love a wedding). If only one player has the Favor of the Gods, that player immediately wins. Otherwise, move on. Total the value of each player’s tokens, counting any +10s or -3 / -5 / -10s and the highest-value token of each god. The wedding rings are worth 0.
The player with the most points wins!
Player Count Differences
None! This is a two-player-only game.
Strategy
- Watch out for playing your 5s too quickly. If you play your 5s quickly, you give your opponent ample time to move them to inconvenient places, place Dolos tiles next to them (thereby gaining a huge boost themselves), or flipping them over with a 4. Since they have no inherent ability, just a high value, it’s possibly worth just holding back on them.
- If you have a 4, it’s worth burning it to take out an opponent’s good tiles. You should target the 5s or the Dolos tiles if you can, but sometimes it’s worth it just to knock out a critical tile they were gonna use to try and steal a row or column you wanted. Stay flexible.
- You can use tiles to move your or your opponent’s tiles to force a scoring. That’s a lot of fun! You can move a low-value accessible tile to a spot that completes the row or column (in your favor, preferably) and then get what you want, even if they were leaving that spot open and hoping they’d draw a higher-value tile on their next turn.
- If you can, try to block your opponent from getting Favor of the Gods. It’s funny and it forces them to work a lot harder. If you can successfully block them from getting it (usually by getting at least one Ring and three tokens of one God), then you’ve forced them to pivoting their entire strategy to blocking you from getting it as well, otherwise they lose no matter how many points they got. It’s a great way to get them on their back foot.
- Playing a Dolos tile next to your opponent’s Dolos tile makes it less useful, but not completely useless. You won’t get anything from it, but neither will they. If they were planning a big useful move, then you’ve just junked half the tile. That can be good!
- Once a row or column is scored, feel free to move your higher-value tiles out and try to use them for scoring elsewhere. You can use a 5 more than once if you play your tiles right, and that’s very helpful for tile scoring and just general advancement.
- Only accessible tiles can be moved; you can use that to your advantage. If you manage to block off your 5, for instance, then it cannot be moved until another tile moved makes it accessible. That’s pretty useful; it just takes a while to pull off.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- The art is impeccable. It looks really good! Harry Conway did a great job. It has a certain ornate vibe to it that matches the vases and such of the time.
- I love an alternate win / lose condition. I particularly like the tension created between the win conditions here and how you need to try and balance getting the most points without losing the Favor of the Gods. It presents a nice tension for players in addition to the strategic tension of just fighting off your opponent’s advances.
- It’s a pleasantly simple abstract, but it definitely has some nice strategic teeth to it. I think there are many different interesting ways to play this game, and I like that. It’s deceptively simple, since the core of the game is just place a tile, draw a tile.
- Easy to set up and reset, which is always good. You can clear the board pretty easily. Whether or not the tiles are easy for you to shuffle is more of a you problem, but I won’t tell anyone if you just put them in a pile face-down and mix them around a bit. Riffle-shuffling tiles is hard.
- I’m a sucker for Greek Mythology, as a theme. You’re going to hear that a lot this month; I’m one of those. I took a class in college and really enjoyed it?
- I like that winning a row or a column means you get to decide who gets what; it sometimes makes the decisions feel a bit more arbitrary depending on which tokens get placed where, and sometimes it makes the decisions critically important. It forces you, the player, to take into consideration which rows and which columns matter to you the most, with the full understanding that that’s a constantly moving target. It’s fun!
Mehs
- Oh! I really hate a cloth board for tile games. What am I supposed to do, iron this? It’s never going to lay flat and the tiles and tokens now lay weird on it. It aggravates the severely Type A part of my brain.
Cons
- I just think any game with Achilles should have Patroclus. Maybe I’ve been playing too much Hades.
Overall: 7.75 / 10
Overall, Iliad is a neat little abstract! There’s a lot to like, from quick setup to simple rules to quick play, but the art really elevates it. I think Bitewing has been prioritizing aesthetics to some degree with their games, and it really shows, here. I do wish that care had extended to having a real board instead of a cloth board, but I think that might just be a personal preference. I just don’t like that they’re impossible to get fully flattened without, like, an iron. Regardless, it’s very easy for players to get this one to the table and it’s consistently interesting, because of all of the different configuration options matter when you’re setting the game up. Where the tokens go influence where and how you want to place your tiles, and what tiles you’ve drawn influence what you can play and how. It’s fun! The endgame conditions keep you on your toes as well, too. Focus too much on points and you’ll miss out on the Favor of the Gods; focus too much on the Favor of the Gods and you’ll end up losing out on points. Striking a delicate balance is much harder than you’d think, especially for a simple game. The great art adds to all of it. Greek Mythology games are always up my alley, though, so it’s nice to see more games in the genre. If you’re a fan of Greek Mythology, you like two-player abstract games, or you just enjoy Achillies or Hector, I’d recommend Iliad! It’s a fun one.
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